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I think what I'm trying to get at is that incorrectly believing you have access to a secure messenger can be worse than acting as if you don't, if those are you

by geofft 5y ago

I think what I'm trying to get at is that incorrectly believing you have access to a secure messenger can be worse than acting as if you don't, if those are your options. The whistleblower might choose not to make contact, but if the alternative is making contact and immediately going to prison (because someone else on your contact list saw a classified screenshot from you and told the authorities), maybe that's better. The activists might choose not to protest, but if the alternative is being caught before they even start their protest (because your group was forwarding a little advertisement image or annotated map around among trusted people, and someone untrusted got it), maybe that's better. Take Reality Winner, for instance (the mechanics of that case were entirely unrelated to secure messengers, but it makes a relevant example overall). The effect on the world of her whistleblowing seems to have been minimal, and the cost to her was significant. Was it worthwhile? If she had been told the risks of the government identifying her were higher and decided not to leak anything, wouldn't that have been a better outcome? I'm not saying there's perfect security. Vulnerable users absolutely need to be making risk assessments and deciding what they're comfortable with, and we should be clear nothing is risk-free. I'm just saying my sense of Signal's risk, in absolute terms, is higher than it was before I learned about this, and that matters to vulnerable users, not just the fact that it probably remains the lowest-risk messenger of the various options. I agree with you overall, and the Pegasus exploit does reflect badly on Apple (and probably should reflect more badly on them than seems to be happening).

godelski 5y ago
> I think what I'm trying to get at is that incorrectly believing you have access to a secure messenger can be worse than acting as if you don't, if those are your options. For the average person, I do not believe this is true. For the non-average person, I believe you are correct but most of these people are aware and should be constantly trained. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that there are two different conversations to be had and we need to know which one we're having. To me it looks like Signal is about as good as you get without loads of complication and for what it is meant to do. > he Pegasus exploit does reflect badly on Apple And same with this on Signal. I do believe we should hold these companies to high standards. But the point I'm trying to make is that these also aren't reasons to abandon the platforms completely (as many users are suggesting here). That's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
- geofft 5y ago
  Yeah, to be clear, I only mean this from the point of view of non-average Signal users. It's a little weird that Signal is both the "baseline security that everyone should have" product (a la HTTPS or WPA2) and the "you are literally hiding from the government" product. Of course, the target market for the latter, when you are not another government yourself, is by definition mostly illegal activity (whether or not the laws are justifiable), so it makes sense that there isn't a good product just for that. In this particular case, it also complicates things that people who are literally hiding from the government also have normal ordinary conversations with lots of people, and it helps things for those ordinary conversations to happen on Signal, but this bug is particularly bad if you do that. (I'm also not really sure where, say, people buying recreational drugs fit on the "average"/"non-average" axis. Is it a reasonable precaution to not text incriminating information to your drug dealer over Signal? It feels like it shouldn't be necessary, but I can see the argument for it.)

by geofft 5y ago

godelski 5y ago

> I think what I'm trying to get at is that incorrectly believing you have access to a secure messenger can be worse than acting as if you don't, if those are your options. For the average person, I do not believe this is true. For the non-average person, I believe you are correct but most of these people are aware and should be constantly trained. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that there are two different conversations to be had and we need to know which one we're having. To me it looks like Signal is about as good as you get without loads of complication and for what it is meant to do. > he Pegasus exploit does reflect badly on Apple And same with this on Signal. I do believe we should hold these companies to high standards. But the point I'm trying to make is that these also aren't reasons to abandon the platforms completely (as many users are suggesting here). That's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

geofft 5y ago
Yeah, to be clear, I only mean this from the point of view of non-average Signal users. It's a little weird that Signal is both the "baseline security that everyone should have" product (a la HTTPS or WPA2) and the "you are literally hiding from the government" product. Of course, the target market for the latter, when you are not another government yourself, is by definition mostly illegal activity (whether or not the laws are justifiable), so it makes sense that there isn't a good product just for that. In this particular case, it also complicates things that people who are literally hiding from the government also have normal ordinary conversations with lots of people, and it helps things for those ordinary conversations to happen on Signal, but this bug is particularly bad if you do that. (I'm also not really sure where, say, people buying recreational drugs fit on the "average"/"non-average" axis. Is it a reasonable precaution to not text incriminating information to your drug dealer over Signal? It feels like it shouldn't be necessary, but I can see the argument for it.)